Suggested Listening: “The Promise” by When In Rome
By the spring of 2008, Ultimate Hoops was running out of room. The court rental agreement I had with the Bloomington school district couldn’t hold what we’d built, and I was already chasing a second life: scouting facilities to run multiple league nights across separate venues on the same evening, doubling and tripling staff to keep the Minnesota market fed. Inbound was steady. Seattle had a facility lined up and ten teams committed for season one. Milwaukee was in. Dallas and LA had the rosters and were finalizing space. The plan was to expand city by city, the slow, hard way.
Then in April, a voicemail.
It was from Life Time Fitness, the national health-and-fitness company headquartered in Chanhassen, twenty minutes west of Minneapolis. They wanted a meeting. They had been watching the UH league grow in their own backyard. Their members were talking about it. They were hearing the buzz. I agreed to come out, take the meeting, and tour a club.